I don’t want it to seem that it took this long for me to take action because it was “not in my back yard” but having it so close, and impact my family so much forced me and my family into action.

The City of Toronto garbage strike wages on… into day 32. The City closed 2 dumps – one pretty close to our area – and opened one, the Otter Creek site, in an outside arena right in the middle of my kids summer camp.

This camp is a Jewish summer camp and this site was made public Friday afternoon and opened Saturday morning which coincides with the Jewish Sabbath.

There are some stats being thrown around about how close the dump can be to the kids because of the toxins, pesticides and mice, and that was 30 metres. The kids are less than 10 feet from this site, or about 3 metres.

Upon hearing this, my wife printed flyers, we got the kids up and dressed and headed over to protest the dump. We told the line up of cars that there was a day camp here – close to 500 kids – and asked them to do as we have and keep their garbage at home instead of poisoning others. We managed to convince 2 cars to turn around and keep their garbage.

Living in an affluent part of the city, it was difficult seeing all these BMW’s and Porsche’s drive up without a care in the world so they could dump their 1 bag of garbage. Oh, how inconveniencing this strike my be for them…

But the most difficult event occurred when I was taking Linus car to car to explain that his camp was right beside the dump (it was actually on both sides) when I found our City Counsellor in the car being driven by her husband. I know because I threw a post-election fundraiser for her and raised $12,000 to extinguish her debt.

I asked her what we were going to do to fight this dump and she offered a solution, got out of her car and walked right into the dump to speak to city officials while… her husband got out of the car, opened his trunk and took out garbage to dump in the site.

GASP.

So she may have said she opposes it but in fact she supports it.

The Mayor, who is at fault, has publicly said that he does not dump his garbage in the sites. The Mayor, who is saving $10 million dollars a day seemed more sympathetic that the counsellor who lives right around the corner from this dump.

The Mayor must go.

The City Counsellor must go.

When I saw him open the trunk I yelled to UrbanMummy to use her iPhone and take a picture. We’ll need it as leverage. She did. It’s been posted on Facebook, Twitter and sent to the local and city newspapers.

Enough is enough. I can’t send my kids to camp where this crap exists.

So why do I find this situation tricky… For one reason there has been rumour that most of the dumps are in lower-income areas, and to that I call bullshit. I looked at the map of dumps… It’s pretty even.

I feel horrible for all the city arenas which are now dumps but I know in our area there are other potential sites, one right close to my house which would have been preferable because there is no camp there.

The camp my kids attend added more councillors in order to accommodate the poor kids whose city-run camps were without camp once the strike started. Now they are being denied camp again.

Why people cannot keep their garbage in their house or unite together to dispose of it in surrounding areas where they still have garbage boggles my mind. I keep my garbage – disposing of a few bags of stinky wet waste – diapers and cat litter – privately because my garbage does not belong in someones backyard.

If the stupid union – CUPE – decides tonight they are no longer bargaining then as a City, we cannot continue to open dump-sites and leave our trash for others to deal with, we must take actions together.

OR…

David Miller wakes up and treats CUPE in the same manner the the Via Rail strike engineers received. They went on strike Friday – half we fired on Saturday, and they settled Saturday night. Train run again Sunday.

Something must be done!

The grass I can deal with – I cut the grass in the park when my son and 50 other kids play soccer.

I paid to have my garbage sent to a the dump and by-passed the city.

I want a refund on my property taxes because as I mentioned before, living in a affluent area means a LOT of property taxes for services I have not received the past month and a bit.

Time for new Toronto council. These ones stink. Like the garbage and their decisions.

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